The Perfect Valentine...

Who Better to Be Your Valentine This Year but Valucre? 

Think about it- love at first sight, with no strings attached! It never wants anything from you but the words you share. In return, you gain a community, friends, and a place to come together and share your prose. No need for chocolates and flowers, expensive dates and cliche hearts printed over cheap cardboard. This year, worry not about whether or not you have a date, or someone special to share the day, because this year, you've got Valucre!

What else could you need?

[Let me preface the rest of this blog ahead of time with an apology for anything feeling... lacking,  by way of the usual quality in which I try to present with your weekly update. I have had an incredibly busy night, and I am starting about and hour and a half late. On top of that, I have had some rather big ups and downs in terms of how I am feeling physically, and with my ability to focus. Without delving too much into personal matters, it may have something to do with my chronic low levels of Vitamin D, so it can be easily rectified- as soon as I get to it. Anyway, just wanted to get that little bit out of the way, and I hope by next week I am back to provide something I feel my readers are deserve.]

What's Happening Valucre? 

Carlos' Useful Articles- Supernal is always looking for ways to make the lives of our members a little easier, and while sometimes his efforts backfire a little (I tease, I tease), sometimes he comes up with something really neat. Supernal has written many articles to help out both newer and older members with information pertaining to role-playing, writing, and T-1 too. Digging these articles takes a little work, and so to make things even easier for you, Supernal has wrapped all of them up into one handy thread. If you want to browse through these useful bits, look no further than this thread, where you can find all that you need. 

The Daily Weekly is Hiring- Well, that daily weekly is always looking for some full-time help with covering Valucre news, and with all these events cropping up, there is certainly much to cover. If you enjoy writing journalistic based writings, you can get paid vb to do it! Report to the daily weekly and drop down your fees for a press badge, then get out there and there and start covering these events. Write them up into a well thought out article and you are on your way to making that deposited money back, and then profit as well. If you are not looking for a full time gig, you can go freelance, and submit articles as you have time to write them. Potentially a whole lot of fun, and the report starts here. 

Dates are Set for The Chosen Tournament- The chosen tournament is coming, and we now have some more official information to put up for prospective fighters. The signups will continue through March 6th, and then tournament will then start March 18th. You still have time to get your character approved and registered, but you would be surprised with how fast time can get away from you. If you plan to go for the crown, make sure you get in and register today. ;) And as an additional note- if you want to talk about the tournament, please visit the lounge thread. 

Rich Characterization in a Dark Setting- This will be a Terrenus based role-play, looking to start out in the town of Last Chance. The thread creator is looking for a basic story at the first, fulfilling classical roles of taking on a few bad guys here and there, contributing to the society at large. Eventually, these heroes are going to end up stranded in the woods with limited supplies, and that is when the darker aspects kick in. The thread looks to explore not only the process of trying to survive, but also having to deal with the rest of your party, especially in those uncomfortable and awkward situations. Are you up for the challenge?

The Next Valucre Writing Contest- Whoo, kind of a spoiler, but a thread should be going up not long after this blog does, if not before. That's right, it's been a little while since Halloween, so we are kicking off another contest. Because we are upon the Chinese New Year, and this is the Year of the Snake, we thought we would do something along those lines. Those born under the year of the Snake are supposed to be clever, so we thought it would be clever (ohhh this is getting redundant already :P ) and make the theme of this contest 'Cleverness'. The medium is any of your choice, just so long as you are able to work in your theme. We are going to begin accepting submissions from the 18th to the 22nd, and then a vote begins the 23rd to run through the 28th. Winners announced March 1st! There will be more details to this, but you can get them from the upcoming thread- watch for it. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place will be 500vb, 250vb, and 100vb respectively. Good luck!

Question of the Week!!! 

Okay, I thought we could not do any worse than the worst we've managed to do with these, but it looks like that at times, we can really outdo ourselves! I only got one answer to this question, and it really didn't go too much into depth. I suppose I will supply an answer myself, just to give you a little more flavor. 

What is the most unusual character you ever role-played?

Response One: 'Cookie the Squirrel'

Response Two (Mine): Strangest character concept I have had, and still use, is a Schizophrenic Cleric who calls himself 'Stupple Hupple', though that is not his real name- obviously. The character is a fully fledged Cleric, who completed his apprenticeship and was raised to the position of a Cleric within his order. Unfortunately, he suffered a fully psychotic break not long after and after cutting off his ear and trying to kill himself in a fire, he fled the cathedral and his order (while stark naked no less) and disappeared. Due to the fire, the majority assumed him dead. Stupple is primarily a paranoid schizophrenic, though he has a lot of disorganized traits- he is quite paranoid and delusion, hears voices, and speaks with a great deal of word salad most of the time. Another interesting thing about him is his choice of weapon- a boat oar with wood duckies tied on with hemp.

Despite this, he is a kind-hearted man with good intentions, who manages both to get himself into trouble, and do some rather remarkable stuff at the same time. Just because you have a mental illness, it doesn't mean you cannot go on to do great things. :)

Surprise Response Three: Dot is an unusually introspective half-troll-thing.  Too smart for her native clansmen, but not quite on par with your typical human mind, Dot's grasp on language is tenuous at best, and she has a tendency to underestimate her own physical strength.  What she lacks in tact and fine motor skills, she makes up for in heart.  She appreciates the beauty of the world, and she wouldn't hurt a fly (or a bird).  At least not on purpose.

[Wait, surprise response three? Yep, we have someone who has made it a real habit to submit answers to me just before, or just after, I get the blog up. So, this answer did not come in to me until just as I put the blog up. A surprise response, at the last second! :P ]

That's all I got for you in terms of answers. If you want more- make sure you submit! Anyway, let's throw a new question out there for all of you: 

"What trait about you most often becomes a trait within your characters?"

So, do you have something about yourself that you might find unconscionably appears within your characters? It's a good question to ask, because it is certainly something worth determining. Let's see what you guys have to say. :)

New Members and Returns! 

Welcome, Jtiger14

Welcome, Hopingfordestiny

Welcome, Morcac

Welcome, Enness

Welcome, Leofrick

Welcome, Apollonie

                                          Welcome, White Chocolate

A bit of a slow week this week, with only seven new members and no returns for those are not currently with us. The numbers fluctuate, and I'm sure in time we will see the long lists once again. I think it will certainly accelerate when summer rolls around. :)

Other Highlights? 

Only because Valucre is my special valentine, I will give you your highlights without the usual griping. Take them and be thankful. >____<

Lore Tab- Hey, you probably hear this come up quite a bit- Valcure's lands have a lot of lore- sometimes, depending on the place, you might have a ton of it! Yet, where can you find all this nifty writing that gives you a better look at where you might want to go? The Lore tab of course! It should be fairly obvious, but just in casedyou missed it, there is a Lore drop down menu located between General and Community.

Did You Know (Thread Ratings)- Hey, did you know that you can rate a thread, thus showing the community at large the opinion of those participating and those who are following along just to read. There are search features that filter by the amount of stars coming up, so if you really want to get your thread noticed- take the time to rate it. You can read more about this here and read more of these handy 'Did You Knows' over here. 

Closing Thoughts? 

A funny thing, regarding the closing thoughts for this week. 

I had a really good idea come to me a couple days ago, something I thought would be a great thing to write about when it came time to work on these closing thoughts. I stored it way as a mental note, and so doesn’t it figure: The next night, I completely forgot about it! This was a great idea too- one of those that you just felt right about, and thought that it would really tie up a nice blog for the week. Leave it to me to not write this idea down anywhere and let it get away from me. 

Granted, it works out somewhat this week, because I am running behind and not feeling so well, so I think I would have ended up not doing the subject any justice, by writing quickly, plainly, and without the detail that topic deserved (I cannot remember it, only that it was certainly worth writing!). I can still make something out of this situation though, because it reminded me of something important that we can do as a favor to ourselves with any writing project-

Keep notes. 

I know, sometimes walking around with a notepad permanently affixed to you might not be realistic, and it could be quite inconvenient. However, there are those times where you just have an idea come to you that you know is something that just cannot be ignored- those ideas that border on epiphany, and you just know it will make a huge difference in your writing project. If you have nothing to write it down, you might end up losing the entire thing! As I am experiencing right now, losing an idea can be incredibly frustrating, and no amount of rummaging around is going to find it for me. It will come back when it is ready. 

With that frustration in mind, I strongly encourage anyone serious about writing to always keep a writing utensil, and a surface for writing upon, whenever you go out anywhere. It’s good practice, and it will lessen the likelihood that you are going to lose a nice idea. This time around I forgot to write it down, but I often come up with things while at work, and most certainly do not have the time to hop on a comp and write these ideas out- most of the time, they come while I am supervising a constant (working 1:1 with the patient, watching for behaviors). 

In these cases, I often do have some paper in my back pocket and a pen tucked behind my ear. Looks nerdy, but it does get the job done, and it allows me to write down cool ideas for role-plays, or stories, or in this case, could have saved the topic for the closing thoughts tonight, so they would not be eaten before I even had a chance to use them. 

Write your ideas down, and make sure you get it to a safe place and have a long term plan backed up. You never know if that idea will help finish your book, create an awesome RP session, or soon could be the basis of your new RP thread. 

Get your info on paper!

That’s all I got guys, sorry this blog is kinda lousy. I will see all of you next week, until then- Later!

- Acies 

"Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write my books so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded!"

~ Sidney Sheldon